Fearlessly Forward: Lee Ranaldo

Among dedicated Sonic Youth
fans, it’s long been something
of an inside joke—“the
Lee song.” Almost as a matter
of ritual, it’s been the last song
on side one of the LP, concealed
deep within the glorious
cacophony. Yet it always seemed
to serve an artful purpose in the
grand scheme of every Sonic
Youth record. After a few doses
of the band’s signature harrowing
howl and the feral yowl of
bizarro-tuned Jazzmasters and
Jaguars, the Lee song was a
breather, the eye of the storm, an
emotive touch, and often a touch
of pop/rock classicism amid the
cyclone swirl. Many Lee songs are
classics in the Sonic Youth canon—“
Mote” from Goo, “Karen
Koltrane” from A Thousand
Leaves, “In the Kingdom” from
Evol. And they gave every Sonic
Youth album a depth, weight,
and beautiful counterpoint to the
band’s more unbridled side.

Sonic Youth’s future is now
uncertain. Lee Ranaldo the
songwriter, however, may be just
hitting his stride. The evidence is Between
the Times and the Tides, a collection of 10
tunes that encapsulates both the love of
melody that the young Ranaldo loved in
the work of the Beatles and Crosby, Stills,
Nash & Young and the sense of adventure
and abandon that made Sonic Youth one
of the most vital and original bands of the
last 30 years.

Between the Times and the Tides began as a
solo effort, but it quickly evolved into a band
effort featuring one the nastiest set of ringers
you could ever swindle: Former underground
hero, now-Wilco ace Nels Cline and New
York avant lifer Alan Licht support Ranaldo
on guitar, organist John Medeski of Medeski
Martin & Wood contributes a lush Pink
Floyd-ian bed of Farfisa and Hammond
organ, and Sonic Youth drummer Steve
Shelley acts as rhythm anchor. They are
the bedrock for a set of songs teeming with
guitar textures that’ll have listeners doing
aural double takes—and that will undoubtedly
surprise many Sonic Youth fans. It’s a
remarkable union of sonics and song.

Nels Cline on the Between the Times and the Tides Sessions

When you’ve spent the last 30
years changing the vocabulary
of the electric guitar, you can call on
some heavy friends. Lee Ranaldo called
on some of the heaviest for Between
the Times and the Tides. To fans who’ve
come to know Nels Cline through his
high-profile work with Wilco in the
last half decade, it may be a surprise to
know that Cline spent years as the lowkey
guitar king of the free-jazz improv
underground. It should come as no surprise,
then, that Cline and Ranaldo—
who has actively championed the avant
underground for decades—have collaborated
in improvisational situations
before, including 2001’s Four Guitars
Live gig with Thurston Moore and
Carlos Giffoni. While motoring between
Wilco gigs, Cline shared some thoughts
on working with his old buddy, mentor,
and brother in sonic mayhem.

It’s cool to be working with Lee
again, I gather?
I’m really proud to be on the record.
I’ve admired Lee’s work with Sonic
Youth, but also with Kevin Drumm and
Text of Light. So I was thrilled. But it’s
funny, I always seem to be the last guy
to overdub on a record, and that happened
here, too. I just went over to the
studio in Hoboken [New Jersey] with
the idea to play on a couple things to
see how it went, and it just kept going.
When I listened to the record, I realized
I played on about everything! The
record is so amazing sounding, though.
It has such a beautiful roar to it. To hear
the way the guitars all sound together
and how strong the songs are—hearing
it made me emotional, frankly. To be
lucky enough to be part of that sound
got to me.

You seem to have such admiration—
almost a gratitude, it seems—for
what Sonic Youth’s work has meant
to you personally.
That’s very true. The influence Sonic
Youth had on me, personally, is almost
incalculable. Certainly, what they did
with guitars was completely intoxicating
and attractive to me. I never
thought about playing or guitar or
sound the same way after I experienced
them. So that’s pretty huge.

When I first got into them, around
’83 and Confusion Is Sex, I got so into
the whole aesthetic and the way the
band gelled. I thought, “This is perfection
… how can I create something
that’s a complete entity like this.” By the
time they got to Daydream Nation and
became this kind of rock ’n’ roll juggernaut,
that was just so huge in every
way—it was hard to not be impressed.

How do you view Sonic Youth’s influence
in the larger musical world?
Well, in the ’90s when you started
hearing bands like Unwound and
Polvo doing things with detuned guitars
and eighth-note rhythm-section
things, you could spot a very direct
influence. There was also a certain outlook
on culture—the way they married
high and low culture—that felt artful
and humorous at the same time. But
mostly it was just that the music was
excruciatingly beautiful, but not in the
sense most people perceive beautiful—
and that gave people a different angle
from which to hear music in general.
A lot of that is in what they did with
overtones. I’m not sure many people
have been able to touch their sensitivity
or their sense of how to create
intoxication with guitar overtones. But
the way that made folks look at harmonic
information is really influential,
even if fewer people hear or see that
than the bigger pop culture influence.

Society isn’t always so kind to the
avant-garde. Is it weird, after so
many years of toiling in the avantgarde
scene, to look up and think,
“Whoa! There’s Lee … there’s Alan
Licht … we’re all still around!”?
Yeah, man! Absolutely. I’m so thankful.
But when I think about how frail
the body can be and how hard basic
survival can be, yeah, to get to sit
there and work out guitar sounds
with Lee or work with Thurston—
it’s not lost on me for a second how
lucky I am. The avant-garde has less
presence in the media right now, but
that’s certainly not for lack of effort
from Lee and Sonic Youth. Their
efforts to expose the world to the
avant-garde are totally heroic, but
also totally natural.

After playing with Lee in a lot of
improvised contexts, was it weird
to work in the realm of actual
songs and compositions?
No, not at all. I used to grapple with
the implications of occupying those
two divergent streams, but I don’t
really live in that mode of thought
anymore. And knowing Lee and
Thurston over the years and watching
how open and spontaneous they
can be in any world, in any way,
that’s helped immensely.

“Xtina as I Knew Her” is a very
strong example of those two worlds
colliding. It’s deep in abstract textures
and ripping solo work.
Well, Lee was so relaxed—it was just a
very relaxed situation. He just let me
come up with whatever idea I wanted,
directing me just a little. And then,
because we were using Pro Tools, he
could grab whatever parts he liked.
But I was surprised how much he
took and how audible he made it.

Do you have any favorite moments
on the record?
I listened to it recently in the car and
I didn’t want to get out of the car. I
think that’s when I got really emotional
about it. I grew up listening to
music in the car in L.A., and getting
that vibe and all the moods—from
the heavy riffage to the lap steel—
was really cool. There’s both drama
and modesty in it, and things like
the lap steel parts that were so spontaneous
and inspired.

Why did this album happen now—did
you feel like things were fermenting, laying
dormant?
Things weren’t really fermenting. They got
rolling really quickly, and it just kept going
from start to finish. I’ve given up asking
myself why it happened the way it did. It
was very naturalistic and unforced—and
really fun. The songs had a genesis in an
invitation to do an acoustic show in the
south of France. I figured I’d do some Sonic
Youth songs, but then this song popped up
out of working on those, and then a few
more came out of that, and I started thinking
maybe I’d do a solo acoustic record with
some singing. But one thing led to another,
and the next thing I knew Steve was playing
on some things that sounded like band stuff.
Then Irwin [Menken, bassist] came over
and it just happened. It was pretty magical.

I was really excited to get Alan Licht—
who I play with in a lot of different improvisational
contexts—in there, too. He’s an
amazing guitar player, and I never get to
hear him play straight-ahead leads—but he’s
so good at it, it’s incredible. Nels and John
Medeski really round things out on guitar
and organ—in a monster way, obviously.

Gear Editor Charles Saufley is a career writer and editor from San Francisco. Before joining Premier Guitar he served as Associate Editor at Acoustic Guitar magazine (where his predecessor was esteemed PG Editor in Chief Shawn Hammond.) He became music obsessed not long after birth—thanks in no small part to older siblings who ‘babysat’ him with a set of headphones, Revolver, and Sticky Fingers. Charles still spends a lot of time listening to records. And his many git-fiddle heroes include Roger McGuinn, Pete Townshend, Tom Verlaine, Eddie Phillips, Nokie Edwards, Gabor Szabo, John Cippolina, Randy Holden, Erkin Koray, Greg Ginn, and Sonic Youth.

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